


Limbo

by RadioFriday



Series: Talonverse [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Dick Grayson is a Talon, Hurt No Comfort, Not Really Character Death, death only in the most technical sense, for now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27576664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RadioFriday/pseuds/RadioFriday
Summary: Dick Grayson died of an undiagnosed heart defect a year and a half ago.Or did he?
Series: Talonverse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015761
Comments: 14
Kudos: 214





	Limbo

**Author's Note:**

> I've returned to Batfam after a little while away and I have fallen very hard down the Talon!Dick rabbit hole, so even though this has been done a million times, here is my own contribution. My timeline probably doesn't make a ton of sense, partly because I'm still getting caught up on current canon and partly because I reject DC's canon and substitute my own. 
> 
> I plan for this to be a 'verse, but I have no idea when to expect updates because I have a few other big projects going on right now.

The lights in the medbay are dimmed. Tim can’t tell if the creature’s eyes are actually glowing or if it’s a trick of the diminished light. The low light does the translucent skin no favors other than making it slightly-- _slightly_ \-- easier to overlook the unnaturally dark veins, and burst blood vessels at it’s temples, in the tender flesh beneath those horrible yellow eyes. They remind Tim of cracks in a porcelain mask and when he shudders, Tim tells himself it’s because of the cold. 

Small, delicate snowflakes drift down from the ceiling around the perimeter of the “cold field.” They modified it from something lifted from Fries years ago. Tim is wearing a heavy ski jacket, a wool hat, and two pairs of gloves. His fingertips are still numb. 

The thing on the bed looks miserable, dejected. It stopped shivering hours ago. Tim absently wonders if dead things can get hypothermia. There’s a stack of blankets in a cabinet behind Tim, just outside of the cold field, but Bruce has forbidden anyone from going within reach of the bed, even though it’s occupant is thoroughly restrained with straps across chest and waist, upper arms, wrists, ankles, and thighs. Bruce or Alfred come downstairs every few hours to administer a sedative that would have previously knocked the lithe body on the bed on its ass for at least a day, if not actually killing it outright. 

Tim doesn’t dare make a move for one of the blankets in the cabinet even though every instinct hardwired into his body is screaming for him to do just that. The body on the bed is stripped down to black boxers and a gray t-shirt stretched thin over sharp muscle. D--this body has always been in peak physical condition, out of necessity, certainly, and probably also a little bit of vanity-- but Tim had never thought of it as deadly. It had moved playfully. Joyfully. 

The yellow eyes blink lazily at the ceiling, then snap attentively to stare at Tim and if looks could kill...well, Tim knows that’s at least one ability Talons don’t have. It-- he-- can probably see every pore on Tim’s face. He can metabolize lethal levels of knock-out juice in hours without ever completely losing consciousness and Tim knows that the wooziness on the Talon’s face is only because the extreme cold mucks with his unnatural physiology, slows down his ability to purge the drug from his system, quickly heal from any injuries. 

The heavy door at the top of the stairs opens and Tim can hear Damian protesting, can hear Bruce quietly-- firmly-- forbidding him from entering the Cave. 

“He...he is my PERSON. I am his PARTNER. Father, you can’t--” 

The heavy door at the top of the stairs closes, echoing through the caverns. Tim closes his eyes and when he opens them, Bruce is at his side bundled in his own scarf, hat, fur-lined parka. 

“Any change?” 

Tim shakes his head. 

“You’re dismissed. Go warm up.” 

Tim steps out of the range of the cold field and the unsettling yellow eyes follow him. A blue-gray finger twitches on the bed. Bruce is already filling a new syringe. 

“I don’t like this,” Tim says, “Bruce, we’re torturing him.”

They’ve had this debate before. Tim and Bruce. Alfred and Bruce. Damian...if Damian _knew_ , Tim knows he would be livid. 

“It doesn’t remember,” Bruce hisses, “Until we can undo this or until...this is the only way.”

“He’s restrained.” 

“You know it can escape practically any restraint unless it’s incapacitated--”

“Stop calling him ‘it.’ Please.”

Bruce sighs. He looks tired. He looks old. He looks like the defeated man Tim found when he first came to the Manor. After Jason.

“Where’s Jason?” Tim asks. So far it’s been himself and Bruce largely alternating their shifts. Occasionally Alfred. Never Damian-- and Tim doesn’t know where he stands on Bruce’s reluctance to let the youngest Robin come downstairs, going even as far as to suspend Damian’s access to the Cave and it’s associated systems. It’s not like Damian wasn’t there when--

“Leads.” Bruce says. 

“What _leads_? The Court is gone--”

Bruce gives Tim a look that makes him feel like he’s 12-years-old again, tossing big ideas out there without paying attention to where they land. 

Dick Grayson was supposed to be gone too, after all, and it all starts to make some kind of horrible sense. Dick died a year and a half earlier. Dick collapsed in the middle of one of his gymnastics classes. Twelve of his students witnessed it. Four called 911 on their cell phones while two took turns performing CPR. He was DOA at Bludhaven Regional Medical Center. The coroner advised he was probably dead before he hit the floor-- or very shortly after. 

Dick Grayson-- world-class acrobat, Olympic-level gymnast, Batman’s greatest protege, a man who dove off of 100-floor skyscrapers for fun, laughing and twirling the whole way down-- Dick Grayson died of a _previously undiagnosed heart defect._

Right. 

“Bruce knows when any of us take a shit.” Jason said after Tim made some comment about how he ‘just couldn’t believe it.’ “You think he wouldn’t have known something like _that_?”

“That’s why it’s called ‘undiagnosed,’ Jason.” 

“You patrolled with Dickface the night before it happened. He seem off his game to you? Out of breath? Slow? Tired?” 

No, but they had checked everything. They had poured over blood and tissue samples. They had taken air samples from the gym, from Dick’s apartment, from the two busses he would have taken from his apartment to the YMCA where he taught. They had tested his water bottle, the tube of Icy Hot in Dick’s duffle, the shampoo, the hair pomade, the discarded yogurt in his trash can, everything in his refrigerator. They tested the lube in his nightstand. They swabbed his freaking toilet seat. 

There was nothing. 

They retraced Dick’s last twelve hours with the sort of meticulousness reserved for one of the Joker’s rampages. It was November. Chilly. Tim had already switched over to his thermal gear. It was a Thursday. Thursday meant family dinner at the Manor or else risking a terse verbal lashing from Alfred. Dick patrolled in Gotham afterward but declined an invite to spend the night at the Manor, citing the morning class he had to teach and claiming that he was still wired and the hour-plus drive back to the ‘Haven would do him good. 

His debit card activity-- and the receipt crumpled up and tossed on the passenger seat of Dick’s Subaru- showed that Dick stopped at a 24-hour McDonald’s right off the Garden State Parkway around 2:25AM. Tim swabbed the steering wheel, the seat belt, gear shift, the remnants of a medium chocolate shake and French fries left behind because Dick was a freaking slob and his car infamously either smelled like stale fast food or gym clothes on any given day. 

There was nothing in the car. 

Access logs showed that Dick swiped his building fob at 3:12AM. Security footage showed him checking his mailbox in the lobby at 3:15, then he was in the elevator at 3:19, then the 8th floor common area at 3:21. He sent a text message to Alfred and one to Damian at 3:25 and 3:27, respectively, that said “I’m home. Hope you didn’t wait up,” to Alfred and “I’m home. Go the fuck to sleep,” to Damian. He drank a beer. He took a shower. He went to sleep. 

The alarm on Dick’s iPhone was set for 7:30AM, but he snoozed it four times. Tim took a swab of the phone, then disassembled it. There was nothing in the phone. 

At 8:10, Dick texted Roy Harper a picture of his naked ass, pointing at a mole that looked vaguely like a bat-symbol, with the caption “told you so.” Roy responded back at 8:20 with a middle finger and a vomiting emoji.

Dick got a grande peppermint mocha and a chocolate cake pop at the Starbucks across the street from his apartment. He caught the 8:45 Center City Flyer, from which he disembarked at 9:05 at Maddow Street, to switch to the Green Line bus that left at 9:16. He entered the YMCA on the corner of Baltic and Ventnor at 9:40. His first class was at 10. A silks class. It was uneventful. Next was the 11:30 class-- mostly beginners. Mostly tumbling on the mats. Maybe balance beam work. No uneven bars. No heights. No vaults. Nothing remotely dangerous or taxing...not for Dick Grayson, anyway.

And yet...the first 911 call went out at 12:09. The paramedics arrived at 12:27. Dick’s death certificate listed the time of death at 12:48. Bruce Wayne was contacted at 2:47 and arrived at the morgue in the basement of Bludhaven city hall at 6:30PM to formally identify the body. Batman and Red Robin arrived at the morgue at 1:25AM to take their own samples and take copies of the coroner’s report. The tox screen showed Advil, Zoloft, and Propranolol in Dick’s bloodstream-- nothing in lethal or even unusual amounts. Nothing unaccounted for.

Red Robin asked, “Why is there a beta-blocker?” 

Batman said, without missing a beat, “Panic attacks.” 

"I didn't know he got those."

"You didn't need to know."

And Jason’s words come back over and over in the months following, “He knows when we take a shit. You think he wouldn’t know if Dick had a heart defect?” 

But they looked everywhere for something. 

Bruce and Tim are the world’s greatest and second-greatest detectives and they couldn’t find anything. 

What else were they supposed to think? 

It was an inglorious death for their ilk. Shockingly straightforward and a little anticlimactic. But sometimes, seemingly healthy people _weren’t_ healthy and sometimes people just died and it wasn’t some evil, nefarious conspiracy, even if the person in question had spent most of his life punching bad guys on rooftops. 

Then again, sometimes it _was_. 

“Go upstairs, Tim.”

Tim nods, “I just don’t like this. It’s not fair.” 

“I know. And you may not believe me, but I don't like it either.”

Tim is halfway to the stairs when he hears a cabinet door creak open and then gently click closed. He pauses and turns, careful to remain out of sight. Bruce is holding a plaid green and red blanket over his arms, the look on his face gentler than the steel that comes through his voice when he speaks. 

“Do you remember what your name is?” 

Silence 

He unfolds the blanket like an offering, a temptation, “Do you remember what _my_ name is?” 

“Bruce Wayne,” the voice is a low rasp, air being forced out of a dead body-- and Tim doesn’t really want to think about those implications. 

“Bruce Wayne,” the figure repeats, “The Court of Owls has sentenced you to die.”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> You have no idea how much time I spent contemplating what kind of car Dick Grayson would drive for what literally amounted to a sentence. I initially thought it would be some super flashy sports car, but then I thought that Dick has a fairly active lifestyle, and probably wouldn't be terribly pretentious about his car given his background. So I settled on a midnight blue Subaru Crosstrek because *I* happen to think the Crosstreks are sexy sexy vehicles and practical to Dick's needs, and he could always borrow one of Bruce's Porsches if he ever felt the need for something a little more ostentatious.
> 
> I'm also not sure what the current DC geography is, but I put Gotham in roughly the same area as where Red Bank, NJ is and Bludhaven has replaced Atlantic City in my universe, making it a straight shot of about 1 hour, 45 minutes down the Garden State Parkway for Dick to get home. Idk. 
> 
> And don't worry, Damian's going to get into the Cave come hell or high water.


End file.
